Maxis: Critics right to slate poor SimCity launch

Joe Anderson
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4 years ago

Maxis General Manager Lucy Bradshaw has said in an internal memo that critics are right to slate SimCity due to it's launch problems, however she still feels that the team has done a fantastic job with the game, which hopefully players will soon see for themselves.

"The rollout in North America has been challenging," wrote Bradshaw in the memo which was acquired by Polygon. "It's also now evident that players across Europe and Asia are experiencing the same frustration.

"I'd like to say that it's not fair that the game score shouldn't be punished for a server problem. But it is fair. SimCity is an online game and critics and consumers have every right to expect a smooth experience from beginning to end.

"I and the Maxis team take full responsibility to deliver on our promise."

It seems that at the moment EA's decision to make this game online only has backfired, although to be fair neither me nor Colin have experienced any issues with the game as of yet.

It's good that they've come out and basically said that it was their fault. At least they are being accountable for it. Amazon have also stopped shipping it due to it not being finished apparently. Few of my mates have it though, and only one has had problems when his server shut down, but he hadn't lost enough data to bother about it.

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I agree bud, makes a change for the developer or publisher to come out and put their hands up. Watched Colin play on it a bit and it does look like a great lil game. Might look into seeing if my pc can run it and give it a go.
”

LFC Bywater
4 years ago

HappyNoodleBoy
4 years ago

EA servers doing what they do best again? didn't gamers have this problem with Spore? Never learn

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The issues with Spore were slightly different. The servers weren't registering when the games were being deactivated from machines, plus there was a limit to how many machines could "share" a copy, which was set to 3. Because of the servers not detecting whether the game had been uninstalled or not, people who were trying to reinstall their game on the same machine were running into issues. The most similar case to SimCity is Diablo 3. People were constantly getting error 37 (http://www.error37.com/), and it was impossible to play the game. I believe the problem was worse with D3.
”

Thomas
4 years ago

“
Spore was brilliant really.
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DynamiteWhyte
4 years ago

Shoozle
4 years ago

I hope this teaches other publishers/developer how they should not implement single player and multiplayer as one element. Or at least allow for SP on its own. Tut, tut EA.
The Souls series does it well because you have the option for offline play.

Robichoico
4 years ago

EA are REALLY doing well for themselves aren't they. I hope this just continues along a chain of events that puts them back into reality.

Pain
4 years ago

I'm so frustrated right now and there's nothing i can do about it. I bought this game today hoping i'd get to play it over the weekend but honestly i don't think that's gonna happen. At least when Diablo 3 came out i was able to play a few hours after launch, this game i have yet to play and i bought it this morning.

troublemaker
4 years ago

Good to see them acknowledging the issues. So long as they remember these issues after they are solved. Otherwise we'll only see these problems again with the next big release like this.

DynamiteWhyte
4 years ago

EA are now offering everyone who has activated their Sim City games a free copy of one of their games from Origin. Very good from them really, with something they didn't have to do. Evil EA, amiright?

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damage control. not softning the blow this game has received from gamers will only hurt future simcity projects
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HappyNoodleBoy
4 years ago

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It is damage control, but it should soften the blow. The game seems to be working for a good percentile of British users just now, and has just been patched, and they're hoping for it to be sorted by over the weekend. A weekend without the game isn't the end of the world for us, and they've held their hands up for the pathetic server issue, and they've done everyone a favour by offering up a free game in the mean time, so basically giving everyone £40. Not bad.
”

DynamiteWhyte
4 years ago

Shoxy85
4 years ago

EA and server problems? This has never happened before. It especially never happened when they wanted to run their own servers on xbox live and I could never get on an EA game for the first few days of it being out.

shiny miller
4 years ago

Just a complete disaster - how a massive company like EA can allow this to happen is amazing. I'm not surprised EA are so slack with supporting existing games (once everyone has already forked out the money), but you'd think they'd be completely on the ball with a new release and ensuring they get all the sales.